„British Prime Minister David Cameron threatened on Friday to obstruct a Franco-German drive for swift change to the European Union’s treaty, a sign of the difficulty leaders will face transforming Europe to save the euro.”

„The new head of the European Central Bank signaled on Thursday he was ready to take stronger action to fight Europe’s debt crisis if political leaders agree next week on much tighter budget controls in the 17-nation euro zone.”

„EU officials have hatched a plan to make banks and bondholders take losses for risks, not now of course, but after 2013. In the meantime, taxpayers will shoulder 100% of the losses for bank lending stupidity. On this confidence inspiring news, European bonds rallied sharply.”

„Goldman Sachs Group Inc., after this year’s losing endorsement of U.S. bank stocks, recommends as its top trade for 2012 a bet against European high-yield corporate debt and forecasts a ‘deeper recession’ for the region.”

„TOKYO (Dow Jones)–Bank of Japan Gov. Masaaki Shirakawa said Wednesday that coordinated central banks’ action to shore up the global financial system was intended to give the financial market „a sense of relief,” but that enhancing the liquidity provision alone is not an answer to solving the deepening European debt problem.”

„South Korea’s industrial output in October fell for the third time in four months, government data showed on Wednesday, missing market expectations and hit by softening global demand while domestic spending remained weak.”

„Euro zone ministers struggled to ramp up the firepower of their rescue fund and raised the possibility of asking the IMF for more help on Tuesday after Italy’s borrowing costs hit a euro lifetime high of nearly 8 percent.”

„Spain’s retail sales fell at their fastest pace in four months in October, the country’s national statistics agency INE said Tuesday, the latest indication of a likely late-year contraction in the euro zone’s fourth-largest economy.”

„Asian central banks from Thailand to the Philippines may be preparing to cut interest rates in coming weeks as an escalating impact from Europe’s debt crisis prompts economists to scale back growth forecasts for the region.”

„At least a dozen Syrian secret police have defected from an intelligence compound, activists said Sunday, in what appeared to be the first major desertion from a service that has acted as a pillar of President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.”

„U.S. Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano said Friday that the risk of ‘lone wolf’ attackers, with no ties to known extremist networks or grand conspiracies, is on the rise as the global terrorist threat has shifted.”

„Pakistan’s commanders in the wild Afghan border region can return fire if under attack without waiting for permission, the army chief said on Friday, a policy change that could stoke tensions after Saturday’s NATO strike killed 24 Pakistani troops.”

„Armed U.S. police officers will for the first time be allowed to operate in Canada along with the RCMP as part of far-reaching changes in Canadian-American border operations to be unveiled next week by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Barack Obama.”

„Pakistan, enraged by a NATO cross-border attack that killed 24 soldiers, could end support for the U.S.-led war on militancy if its sovereignty is violated again, the foreign minister said, adding ‘enough is enough.’”

„International drug gangs from Africa and Iran are muscling in on Southeast Asia’s booming methamphetamine business which has shown a staggering increase and is spreading through the region, the United Nations said in a report on Tuesday.”

„Pakistan’s prime minister ruled out „business as usual” with the United States on Monday after a NATO attack killed 24 Pakistani soldiers and the army threatened to curtail cooperation over the war in Afghanistan.”

„Russia will send a flotilla of warships led by its only aircraft carrier to its naval base in Syria for a port call next year amid tensions with the West over the Syrian crisis, a report said Nov. 28.”

„The Chinese leadership’s law-and-order chief is warning that China is ill-prepared for social unrest generated by changes in the economy, in the latest sign that the government is worried about the consequences of flagging growth.”

„Residents of Kahuta went berserk on Tuesday as they damaged a CNG filling station and several vehicles when the police tried to intercept them during their protest against low pressure and load shedding of the gas.”

„Police in riot gear closed in before dawn on Monday on anti-Wall Street activists in Los Angeles who defied a midnight deadline to vacate a camp outside City Hall, but stopped short of clearing the encampment.”

„Syria faced growing economic sanctions and condemnation over „gross human rights violations” on Monday, but President Bashar al-Assad showed no sign of buckling under international pressure to end his military crackdown on popular unrest.”

„Against the electricity demand of over 15000 MW, the country is already producing around 10000 MW only which will further reduce to 7000-8000 MW only leading to 12-18 hours load-shedding in the big and small cities of the country from next month.”

„Brazil’s huge offshore oil wealth has been called a lottery jackpot, and each of the industry’s contracts is another winning ticket. But even with a lucky stub in hand, some companies risk going broke before they can claim their prize…

„‘The cost and technology risks are higher than the government or Petrobras are saying,’ said Celio Bermann, an engineer and oil policy researcher at the University of Sao Paulo. ‘The government has set production goals for 2020 that probably won’t be met until 2023 or later.’”

We can’t say we didn’t see this coming. The difficulties, expenses, and dangers of getting oil in inhospitable environments are weighing heavily on the industry. — RF

„Range Fuels Inc., a cellulosic ethanol company backed by as much as $156 million in U.S. loans and grants from President George W. Bush’s administration, is being forced by the government to liquidate its only factory after failing to produce the fuel.”

„In Uganda, the shortage of electricity is crippling business, especially in the capital, Kampala. There are power outages, also called load shedding, that some say can last as long as five days in a row.”

„Green activists, take note – for Australia fully to embrace solar power, Canberra would have to spend $100 billion, with photovoltaic cells to generate the electricity covering an area twice the size of Sydney in order to replace Australia’s indigenous inexpensive coal-fired power plants with renewable energy sources.”

„Other issues like persistent day-long power outages and shortage of fuel are compounding the problems of locals. Purchasing firewood has become impossible due to inflated rates; liquefied petroleum gas has already skyrocketed.

„Locals have been forced to cut down fruit trees for firewood while the district administration silently observes the growing frustration of its people.”

„Investments in Norway’s oil and gas sector are forecast to hit a record Nkr184.6 billion ($32 billion) next year as the need to upgrade ageing infrastructure and boost recovery from mature fields drives spending…

„However, a shortage of rig capacity could act as a constraint on exploration as units are taken for production drilling.”

„The Pentagon wants the world to know: When the American military stops spending billions per week in Afghanistan and eventually goes home, the Afghan economy is gonna be totally fine. After all, they’re sitting on trillions in mineral deposits, just waiting to be mined.

„Too bad many of the mines are in regions too dangerous or geographically treacherous for companies to set up camp. And it’ll take at least a decade before the mines yield tangible goods, and the profits that accompany them.”

„Solar panels and wind turbines are a ‘volatile’ source of power with fluctuations in the electricity supply risking ‘grid instabilities’ and triggering wide-scale blackouts.

„Ageing infrastructure and increasingly cross-border electricity networks have heightened the likelihood of a devastating collapse of power supplies lasting months and covering several continents, according to the joint report by Allianz and the Chief Risk Officer Forum.”

It was nonsensical and arrogant in the first place to think we could discard our long johns. Soon national leaders around the world will be begging their citizens to conserve, whereas ironically they have always been begging us to consume. — RF

„Rootworms in Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota and Nebraska are suspected of developing tolerance to the plants’ insecticide, based on documented cases of severe crop damage and reports from entomologists, the EPA said in a memo dated Nov. 22 and posted Nov. 30 on a government website. Monsanto’s program for monitoring suspected cases of resistance is ‘inadequate,’ the EPA said.”

„Because of soil contamination, one-eighth of Fukushima’s soil can never be plowed again, and the consumption of crops grown on such plots is strictly forbidden. Many local companies have gone bankrupt, while 20,000 individual proprietors are on the brink of insolvency.”

„If no reactor restart approvals are given, all of Japan’s units could be out of operation by mid-2012.”

Keep in mind that idle reactors are a heavy financial burden to the utilities that own them. Even if not operating, they must still be staffed and managed, and cooling systems must be kept running. — RF

„Tokyo Electric Power Co. has decided to discontinue construction of the No. 1 reactor at its Higashidori nuclear power plant in Aomori Prefecture, as it cannot secure sufficient funds due to compensation payments it is making in connection with the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, sources have said.”

„Swaption spreads are their highest in seven months – traders are paying more now to lock in cost of future JPY funds on the expectation of rising rates…and at the same time, the difference in prices for puts and calls in the FX option market are the most bearishly biased in over seven years.”

„The monumental, neo-Mongolian sculptures, empty plazas and hulking concrete shells of buildings in Ordos district, deep in the steppes of Inner Mongolia, are a potent symbol of how China’s property boom can turn to bust.”

„‘Despite persistent high inflation, China [has decided to] finally bite the bullet in raising electricity tariffs, which in our view foreshadows domestic price hikes for gasoline and diesel in the not-too-distant future,’ said Gordon Kwan, head of energy research at Mirae Asset Securities.”

„It’s been a rocky month for China’s real estate industry. In the first week of November, brokerages in the southern metropolis of Shenzhen have seen a 60% year on year drop in sales volume, while average home prices in Shanghai dropped to a 6 month low.”

„Police were forced to use their own mobile phones during the August riots after a multi-billion pound radio system collapsed, according to a leaked internal report on how UK forces responded to the disorder.”

„The Government is set to borrow £111 billion more over the next five years than previously expected, according to forecasts by the independent tax and spending watchdog, as the UK moves to the brink of a double-dip recession.”

„Facing bankruptcy, the U.S. Postal Service is pushing ahead with unprecedented cuts to first-class mail next spring that will slow delivery and, for the first time in 40 years, eliminate the chance for stamped letters to arrive the next day.”

„Clearing houses may be the next too-big-to-fail institutions. These circuit-breakers of the financial system weathered the collapse of MF Global and Lehman Brothers, and clear trillions of dollars of transactions every day. But they are about to take on a lot more risk, and there is no plan in place to deal with a big player failing. That should set alarm bells ringing.”

„Hit by steep cuts in federal funds, fuel assistance programs are expected to run out locally in mid-December, casting the region’s advocates for the needy into a panic: As temperatures drop and heating oil prices rise, how will their clients stay warm?”

„Economic mobility – a family’s ability to improve its financial situation – has slowed for America’s lowest-paid workers since 1980, meaning it’s getting harder to make „rags to riches” a reality, according to a recent report from Wells Fargo & Co.”

Coincidentally (or not), it was in the 1980s that oil prices started to climb. — RF